For Her, Sky’s No Limit : Command of Aviation Squadron Is Next Step in Cmdr. Mariner’s Pioneering Career

Cmdr. Rosemary Mariner hails from the “first-or-never” generation of female aviators in the Navy.

When the 37-year-old set out to be a pilot, she says, the choice was simple: because the ranks of Navy aviators included no women, she could either be among the first, or never fly at all. She chose to be a pioneer.

She was one of the first eight women selected to attend flight school. She was the first woman to fly a tactical jet and to fly a front-line attack plane.

And now, Mariner, who once washed planes in exchange for the chance to fly in one, is about to become the first woman to command a Navy aviation squadron.

“When I hit a wall, I am going to get under it, over it, or around it. Put a wall in front of me and my reaction is to knock it down,” said Mariner, explaining her ascent through the predominantly male world of the Navy.

Although federal law prohibits women from fighting in a war, Mariner and other women over the years have wrested--almost plane by plane--the right to fly high-performance aircraft, to go to sea and to practice aircraft carrier landings.

“I definitely call myself a feminist--though I don’t agree with everything feminists do,” Mariner told The Times in her first interview since being named to her new position. “It’s very important for professional women to acknowledge that a lot of things would not have changed if not for bra-burners.”

Seated in her sparsely furnished office, where a framed photo of her husband is the only visible personal memento, Mariner talked about her military career and contemplated what the future holds for enlisted women. More optimistic than many of her male counterparts, she predicted that women will be allowed in combat by the end of the decade. “The choice will be either drafting males or accepting females.”

Others, however, are less sure. “I don’t see it changing tomorrow or the next day,” said Vice Adm. Jeremy Boorda, chief of naval personnel and deputy chief of naval operations in Washington.

Today, women make up 10% of the Navy, up from about 2% in 1972. Among aviators, however, a female pilot is still an anomaly. The Navy has 233 of them, which is less than 2% of its aviators.

On July 12, Mariner will assume command of the Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 34 (VAQ-34) based at the Naval Air Station in Point Mugu. She is now the squadron’s executive officer, or second in command. The 300-member squadron, which is about 30% female and shore-based, provides simulated hostile electronic warfare for Atlantic and Pacific Fleet training exercises.

Why have a woman in charge of a squadron if she cannot lead that squadron into combat? “I am trying to make it as equal as it can be under an unequal situation,” said Boorda, who explained that women play an important part in training personnel for combat, even though they are not allowed to fight themselves.

Members of Mariner’s squadron say she’s doing her job better than most.

“Mariner has all the attributes and qualities of a good leader and a good fighter pilot. She has punched all the right tickets,” said Senior Chief Petty Officer Bob Howard, a Navy spokesman with the Pacific Fleet’s naval air force. “The fact that she is a woman has nothing to do with it.”

“I had not met a leader, a person whose qualities I want to emulate, until I got here,” said Lt. Sally Fountain, a Virginia native who joined the Navy five years ago and is now a member of Mariner’s squadron. “And as a female, when I find another woman, I sit up and take notice because she has done it.”

For Fountain and others, Mariner is a role model--something that Mariner herself did not have as a young female pilot.

“Mariner is a point woman, the person who goes first and into harm’s way,” said Linda Grant De Pauw, professor of history at George Washington University and publisher of Minerva, a journal covering women in the military. “The image of woman as warrior is the flip side of woman as victim and women are so used to thinking of themselves as victims.”

Mariner, who has logged more than 3,300 military flight hours in 15 types of aircraft, is not the only woman to ascend. Cmdr. Deborah Gernes has been named to command a Pearl Harbor-based fleet oiler, the Cimarron. And Lt. Cmdr. Darlene Iskra has been selected to command the Atlantic Fleet’s salvage ship Opportune beginning late this year.

And Cmdr. Linda Hutton is scheduled to become the commanding officer of a Norfolk-based aviation squadron in April, 1992.

Mariner had wanted to become a pilot since she was a child. Her father, an Air Force pilot, died in a plane crash when she was 3. After his death, Mariner’s fascination with planes grew.

When Constance Merims, Mariner’s mother, moved her three daughters to San Diego in 1961, Rosemary was 8. But the young girl quickly discovered Miramar Naval Air Station. And soon, when she was asked to baby-sit for her younger sisters, she would trot them through San Clemente Canyon to watch the jets take off at Miramar. Twice the girls watched pilots eject as their planes crashed, but Mariner was determined to fly.

And her mother did not quash that dream.

“I was worried because her father had been killed in an aircraft accident but she was so determined to do it, I felt I shouldn’t hold her back,” said Merims, now a resident of the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego and a former Navy nurse.

With single-minded determination, young Rosemary read every book on pilots and flying that she could get her hands on. And realizing that flying lessons would be costly, she began cleaning houses as a young teen-ager--keeping her earnings in a shoe box.

One afternoon, as she got ready to go clean a house, she turned on the television. An announcer interrupted the movie and said the network would call one member in the audience to ask the name of the film. When her phone rang, she knew the name of the movie--”Interlude”--and she won $200. The money was enough to launch her flying career. And she soon became a regular at Gillespie and Lindbergh fields, where she washed planes in exchange for flight time.

At 17, she earned her pilot’s license and caught a glimmer of the publicity that has dogged each milestone in her career. The San Diego papers described her as a sort of airborne wondergirl.

At Purdue University, a vice president of Trans World Airlines came to talk to Mariner’s class. When she inquired about becoming an airline pilot, she was told that the American public would never accept a woman aviator. Another airline official told her the same thing.

In that very year--1973--the Navy decided to admit women to flight school. After getting a newspaper clipping from her mother that announced the Navy’s decision, Mariner applied. And she was accepted. Again, she endured another media blitz.

“I took it for granted that doors would be opening,” Mariner said. “It wasn’t until much later that I realized it wasn’t going to be easy.”

In fact, it wasn’t at all easy. In the 19-week officer training school in NewportI., the women had classes in a separate facility from their male counterparts. She learned that it was undignified for female officers to sit atop bar stools, she said.

“I hated it. I was young and hot-headed,” Mariner said. “Nothing I was taught applied to the real Navy. What they were dealing with was a woman’s Navy and that is not the real Navy.”

Today, young Navy women scarcely sail an easy course, Mariner said. But it is far smoother than Mariner’s tumultuous times when she says some instructors told her they would do their best to see that she failed. When she talks of young enlistees, her voice becomes wistful.

“Sometimes I am very envious of the women starting out. But I am also envious of the young men--everything is possible when you are 22 years old,” Mariner said. “It’s great to be young and starting out.”